Q+A: I'm interested. So, how do we get started?

 

Thinking of buying or building?  

    You want a new home? 

    Or you want to renovate your existing home?

Our Design Consultation puts architectural advice at your fingertips.

Let's start at the beginning. 

    If it's a renovation: WHAT problem are you looking to solve. WHY do you want to renovate, or build?     What's not working for you NOW, and what's the best way to solve it.

    If you're building new: WHY did you choose THIS site? WHAT is the very best fit for you and this site? HOW can we make the very best of what the site and our architecture makes possible.

In short, what's the best diagnosis for your situation. That's what we do in our Design Consultation: Diagnosis, and Analysis. And some solutions.

Because if you're going to all the effort of building a home for yourself and your family, you don't want a one-size-fits-all home from a house-builder or a magazine — you want a house that fits you and your personality like a glove. And for many years to come.

That's what we do here at Organon Architecture.

If you want a flower out of the system instead of a weed, then you 

should contact us to book a Design Consultation.

Book your Design Consultation today

As Bruce Goff used to say, we aim do what you would do if you were a good architect. It all starts with our Design Consultation, where we get to know you (and you get to know us!) and we both start to see how to solve your problem by integrating your architecture with your site.

Q: What's a Design Consultation?

A: Our no-risk Design Consultation gives you architectural expertise for a limited time at a reasonable price, with no strings attached. Think of a design consultation as a house call: we visit your home, if appropriate; discuss and sketch possibilities; and answer basic questions about costs and construction alternatives for your new home, or for your proposed home improvements.

Together we can explore placement of a new home or extension, making the most of light and sun and views, masking of neighbours and sculpting of awkward spaces or facades, correcting balance and composition, and adding visual interest. We can even recommend how to avoid some common mistakes. 

After the consultation, a letter will document the results and conclusions of the design consultation. The design consultation is a “stand-alone” service. You are not required to retain us for the duration of your particular project. Our letter can form the basis of a briefing letter for whomever you wish. 

Q: Is it affordable? 

A typical Design Consultation takes two to three hours and costs $800 (inc. GST) as a stand-alone service -- and that includes our follow-up briefing letter and recommendations.

If you don't decide to continue with us, you can use our briefing letter elsewhere. If you do decide to continue with us, and we're confident you will, your Design Consultation fee forms part of your deposit for our next Workphase.

Q: What if I'm not sure?

If you aren't completely satisfied with the Design Consultation during the first hour, you may stop the Consultation at that time without charge.

Q: What should we bring with us to our Design Consultation?

Don't worry too much about preparing a briefing letter -- that is what we can all work on in the Consultation.

The following items will help us give you the most useful recommendations in the least amount of time. Having copies ready before the consultation begins really helps (ask us if you need help finding or acquiring any of these).

·       Site Plan or Survey. This document, prepared by a Surveyor, locates your site or your existing house relative to property lines, driveway, and servitudes. (Don't worry if you don't have this yet; if necessary we can organise this with our surveyor for you after the Consultation.)

·       Photographs of the Site or Exterior. Take photos of the front, sides and rear of your site or home, and of any major features inside or views round about. With a digital camera, you can easily take fifty to a hundred photos quite easily and then put them on a memory stick or upload to Dropbox. Some clients even send us drone videos! More is always better. 

·       Subdivision restrictions (if applicable). Many subdivisions have restrictive covenants limiting what can be done on your site or with your existing home. These covenants may limit your materials, establish setbacks and require approval of any plans. Look in your purchase documents for these. If you aren’t sure if your subdivision has such restrictions, check with your real estate agent or solicitor.

·       Floor Plans & LIM. A copy of your existing home’s plans is essential for renovation. Most council offices have copies of plans of existing local houses—and if you have recently purchased, you will have a Land Information Memorandum (LIM) offering essential site information from council’s records. (Again, don't worry if you don't have this yet; if necessary we can organise this with our surveyor for you after the Consultation.)

·       Contour Plan. For all new house projects and renovations, you will need to supply a site level survey. You may need to employ a surveyor for this. Ask us for a recommendation if you are at all uncertain. 

·       Your ‘Clip’ File. No two homeowners prefer the same materials, colours, fixtures or appliances. To help us learn your preferences, tear out pages from magazines, add ideas to Pinterest or Houzz,  or collect materials and brochures illustrating the ‘feel’ you want. Place a note on each, noting the items that caught your eye, and why.

Q: Where do we meet up?

We generally hold our Design Consultation meetings here in our office in Newmarket, Auckland, before organising to visit your site.

But we can also come to you. Travel time within Greater Auckland is free. For locations outside this area, travel charges to visit site(s) can be negotiated in advance (or can sometimes be integrated into a road trip in his MG!). Contact Peter for further details.

Q: Can we do our Design Consultation online?

For the very best peronalised design outcomes, it's vitally important we know you and your family as well as we can! So face-to-face meetings whenever possible are our preference. We do understand however that this is not always possible, so where necessary we can accommodate a Zoom meeting. 

 

With appropriate photographs and documentation, the Consultation may be conducted online. Many out-of-town clients have taken advantage of this option. Contact Peter for further details.

Q: I've booked in for our Design Consultation -- what do we do while we wait? 

You can have a peek here at some of our projects. Or take an Architectural Mini-Tutorial below to get a feel for how we approach your home. 

• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: 'Capturing a View Alive'
• ARCHITECTURAL MINI-TUTORIAL: It's all in the plan
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Breaking the box, part 1
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Ceiling Decks
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: The New Zealand House
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: The Sociable Kitchen
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Organising our visual field
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Radiant Heat
• Architecture: Making ‘a home for man.’ Part 2: What is a man?
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: More about windows
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Using tricks to deliver meaning
• Quote of the Day: "I finally got why architects spend as long as doctors getting an education"
• What is the ideal relationship of architect to client?
• But don't all designers need to compromise?
• Architectural Mini-Tutorial: Tips for your home office
• ARCHITECTURAL MINI-TUTORIAL: Soft Geometry
• Five architectural "must-haves"
• "Nature Near"

PRIMITIVE ART GROUP/BRAILLE COLLECTIVE

For interview etc. with Daniel Beban

BEGINNING TRACK: 

• TRACK 1: Black Dog, 1989 [to remind listeners] 

FORMATION STORY:

Stuart Porter on the early days, starting on a gifted saxophone: 

“He didn't even tell me how to play it. He said just do whatever you do. Blow it. Wiggle your fingers. That's about all the advice I got from him. And that's pretty much the advice I give young saxophonists these days. Blow it and wiggle your fingers. See what comes out and see where it takes you. That's all you really need to know.'

"You didn't get any other tips about the saxophone, books about fingering and that sort of thing?' I ask.

'No. Why would I do that?' he says. 'It was enough for me just to be handling this thing and making big honking noises on it. I had no musical training up to that point at all. At that stage the saxophone was just about making a huge noise to me. I just decided to make noises on the saxophone and try in some way to make those noises into music, without playing notes.”

Anthony Donaldson on meeting Stuart Porter: 

“'So I went up for an audition [at the Wellington Jazz School],” Anthony remembers. 'There were five people there, all the tutors. One of them said, "How long have you been playing for?" I said, "Well I've been playing for three months." Four of them left the room. They just got up and left.' After a few months in Wellington Anthony followed Bruno [’Lawrence’]s advice and got in touch with Bud Jones. … playing percussion in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra … ‘”…it was obvious that I didn't have what would be considered natural rhythm. I was practising six hours a day, five days a week for Bud, trying to keep up with what he was trying to do. Every other moment of my life I'm trying to play like Barry Altschul, trying to play sounds, just getting more and more into the free thing. See, I'd already worked out that you've gotta get your own sound, it's crucial. So I'd been doing that about a year when, where I was flatting, the woman next door, she'd heard me practising and said, "I know someone who plays like you, Stuart Porter, he's a sax player, you guys should play together." So I got his number and I rang him up.'

Q: Many overseas influences. Let’s go all the way back to the start, as I understand it. Tell us about the influence of Phil Davison coming to Wellington (who we’re just about to hear on Funhouse Blues)

• TRACK 2: Funhouse Blues [5:49] for Phil Davison’s solo sax, from perhaps the first album of improvised music/free jazz in NZ called 'Songs for the Dead of Gandamak', finally self-released in 1979

MORE TRACKS

• Primitive Art Group: Lannie’s Revenge 5:17 (Album: Primitive Jaw Clap, 1985)
• Primitive Art Group: Charles Mungbean 7:29 (Album: Primitive Jaw Clap, 1985)
  
• Primitive Art Group: Arctic Waltz “the single” 6:39 (Album: Five Tread Dropdown, 1984)
• Jungle Suite: ‘Pitch and Toss’ 2:39 (Album: A Walk of Snipe, 1986)
• Rabbitlock: Porridge (heavy broth) 6:16 (Album: The Backbone, 1986)
  
• Four Volts: Magpies 4:09 (Album: Somethings Burning, 1986)
• Front Lawn ‘When You Come Back Home’, 1989 3:37
  
• David Watson: A Code 3:38 (Albuym, Reference, 1986)
• Family Mallet: Bosch’s Bottom 2:33 (album: Bosch’s Bottom, 1986)
  
• Six Volts: Crying Shame 3:38 (single, 1991, Album: Stretch) - on CD
• Brainchilds: I Gotta KNOW 2:27 (Album, Braiinchilds1993) - on CD
  
• Thrashing Marlin: Ship of Fools/ boo bam/all you’ve got someday (feat. Len Lye) 4:35 (Album: Wits End, 2006)
• Mantarays: Dancing Round the Fire 4:01 (Album: Garden of Light, 2009) w Daniel Beban on guitar

SOUNDBED(S) FOR INTERVIEW: 

• ‘Flower’, 20:05, by Spontaneous Music Ensemble
• ‘Swinging in the Rain,’ 14:46, Primitive Art Group
• The Black Sheep. 10:12, The Black Sheep 

How to begin creating Organic Architecture ...

'Rasmussen Residence,' 2003, by architect James Schildroth

Organic architecture is not about assembling boxes and coating them with candy floss. For that, read your latest glossy "architecture" magazine or Instagram page -- or watch the latest episode of Grand Designs. Former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice James Walter Schildroth explains that to design organic architecture, you need to start not from without but from within. Why? Because, as he says, "This is architecture not sculpture art. What is important is the human being who will use the space." Organic architecture puts human beings in relation to the world beyond. "Space never confines. Space is always in relation to the beyond."

Here's how he learned to design for human beings this way apprenticing at Frank Lloyd Wright's practice...

Learning to design at Taliesin
By James Walter Schildroth, Architect 

When I arrived at Taliesin in September of 1959, I had good drafting skills and had taken three years of mechanical drawing in high school and one year in junior college. I had been reading several of Mr. Wright’s book including A Testament and the The Natural House. I had been mentored by Will Willsey, Architect and Taliesin apprentice in 1954-55. Will, had introduced me to the use of the ‘unit system’ and I was working out designs using the four-foot square unit. I did not understand how to get an original design. I was just emulating the Wrightian design and making a few of my own changes.
    I wanted to learn how to create original form and ideas. This why I had come to Taliesin and I was determined to learn and would stay as-long-as it took to know if I could do it or not.
The idea for an original design was the goal. How did Mr. Wright and others do it?
    Organic is “of the thing and not something applied for the outside.” It is not copied or made to look like something that exists. I could make a logical floor plan but the plan was not the idea, it was just a floor plan. The idea must come from some other place, but where and how?  

    Breaking the box was much talked about.
Someone explained that if one was making a floor plan of a 120 square-metre house, they could draw a rectangle 10m x 12m and fit all the rooms inside. This was not the ‘Organic Way.’ The Organic way, was to let the individual areas of the house be put in a relationship to the site as well as in a relationship to each other.
    Ask each function or area what it needed. Start with the parts and put each part on the site plan where it was best served.
    An example is a breakfast area. Now most people eat breakfast in the early morning and may want the morning sun coming in the window. So that would locate the breakfast area on the east side of the plan. Continue this with all the areas of the house plan.
    I call the function areas of the house the ‘Parts.’
    Mr. Wright’s saying: “Part is to part as part is to, whole.”
    This exercise is not a design it is the beginning of understanding the needs in relationship the conditional requirements of the project.
    I learned to do this on the topographical site plan and place the parts of the areas on the site plan at the same scale. I made cutouts of each area like bedrooms, labeled each one and so could move these areas around on the site and in relationship to each other. The result was an organisational relationship. This is not a floor plan yet. What it does is point out the problems that need to be resolved. You learn very quickly that if the lot is small and the area needs are large that you will have a two-floor house.
    Put each area in the best location and you will have some conflicts.
    Mr. Wright’s saying: “The solution to the problem is contained within the conditions of the problem.”
   Understanding the problem is the most important beginning. I learned not to start by sketching or making drawings.
    So, what can I do? How can I make a design without drawing it?
    Mr. Wright said that he did the design in his mind before any drawing. I said to myself “if Mr. Wright said it was the way he did it, I would try it.” After completely understanding the site and the requirements I did not focus on what the design could be. I did not look for an existing design to copy. I did not start sketching. I did something else, anything else.
    As I was doing other things often a partial idea or even a way to solve one of the problems would come into my mind. These beginning ideas are not fully formed and need to be kept in the mind to develop. If you sketch them, you will freeze them and it will be more difficult to allow them to develop and change.
    Mr. Wright said: “Let the idea stay in your mind until it more fully develops so you can visualize it and walk through it inside and outside.” When you can see the idea in your mind, then is the time to start to draw it.
    I also start to think about a design by putting myself on the real site and seeing the features of the site all around me. I let the design develop around me. I do not look at the design from the outside but from the interior space in relationship to the site features.
Organic Space
    I learned that Mr. Wright was not simply making floor plans, he was drawing plans that represented the space he had in his mind. 

What is ‘Organic Space’?
   It is not a room. It is not a box with holes for windows.
“Organic space shelters and defines but never limits or confines” is my way of putting the concept. The areas are in a relationship with the whole of the interior and the site features on the outside.
    Jack Howe taught us not to trap space but to find a way to let it flow beyond.
    Space is far more than area or volume.
    Space engages and involves the mind of the person that is having the experience. This involvement invites the mind of the person experiencing the architecture to be in relationship to the architecture by completing the space in the imagination.
    Space never confines. Space is always in relation to the beyond.
    Space allows the mind to complete, in imagination that which goes beyond.
    Organic Space shelters and defines but never limits or confines. 

Some of the so-called organic shapes to my mind do not have this aspect of Space. They have curvilinear shapes that are called organic, but they are still boxes, because they confine and contain the same as a rectangular box. To be Organic, Architecture must have this quality of Organic Space. It must allow the mind of the person to freely play with the infinite just as it does in the out of doors in nature.
    Buildings are made with a floor, walls, and a roof. How the architect does this makes all the difference. The usual way is a box room put together with a lot of other boxes. This is trapped space a kind of prison. To break the box, one must let the edges go beyond the walls and the roof. Just as the floor inside goes outside through a sliding glass door to the wood deck. The walls can also go from inside to beyond outside giving the feeling of openness and continuity. The walls become protective screens and masses of stone or brick with open glass areas between. The whole of the interior is in relationship with features of the site outside. The ways to do this are infinite and up to the designer’s talent. I always let the function guide my choices.
    Mr. Wright’s saying: “Form and function are one.” This is architecture not sculpture art. What is important is the human being who will use the space."

'House for Betta,' 1998, by architect James Schildroth

[UPDATE: Dates and locations corrected.]